The Captain

The Captain scores below the median on Openness and Agreeableness and above it on Conscientiousness and Extraversion. In plain words, you favor what is proven over what is new, you set goals and work toward them, you are at ease with people and with being in charge, and you put results ahead of keeping everyone comfortable. "The Captain" is our short name for that pattern of four scores relative to the median, not a type found in research; the methodology explains how the line is drawn.

How the four traits combine

Of the five traits, Extraversion is the strongest correlate of leadership in a meta-analysis, and Agreeableness the weakest (Judge et al., 2002). High Extraversion puts you on the favorable side of the first finding, and the second means your low Agreeableness costs you little there, since Agreeableness was nearly unrelated to leadership. High Conscientiousness adds machinery: deadlines, owners, follow-up.

The tension is between speed and buy-in. Low Agreeableness lets you say the unwelcome thing and hold a position under pushback, but it also makes you underestimate how much a decision costs people who were not consulted. Your confidence and your taste for the proven can also combine into dismissing a junior colleague's unconventional idea because it has no track record yet, which is when it is cheapest to test.

Calm or intense

Neuroticism decides whether the pressure you create stays outside you or comes home with you. Toward the low end, setbacks are data. Toward the high end, the same drive is fed by a fear of letting the team down, which can make you more exacting with yourself than with anyone else.

Near the middle

If your Agreeableness score is close to the median, you resemble The Pillar, who has the same discipline and sociability but cooperates more readily. If Openness is the close one, The Pioneer is nearby: the same drive, aimed at newer ground. A score near the middle on Extraversion brings you toward The Realist, who works the same way with fewer people around.